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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28350603">Thirteen Days</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12/pseuds/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12'>EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Angst, Blood and Injury, Gen, Hurt, Implied/Referenced Torture, Injury, Major Character Injury, No medicine, Obi-Wan Kenobi Whump, Post-Episode: s04e13 Escape From Kadavo, Potential two-shot, Severe Foot Injury, Slavery, Torture, Whipping, Whump, field medicine, treatment</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:53:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,186</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28350603</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12/pseuds/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>That was how long Obi-Wan and Rex and the Togrutas had been on Kadavo. </p><p>How long it had taken them to do this.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Obi-Wan Kenobi &amp; Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi &amp; Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi &amp; CT-7567 | Rex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>194</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Thirteen Days</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I think the Kadavo arc is one of the most interesting in the series and the ending never did work for me. The fact that everyone just sort of walks away is kind of absurd (though it makes sense for the fact that its a children's show). </p><p>This was an attempt to explore the more realistic aspects of torture and Anakin's own associations with those things from his life as a slave and his attachment and overprotectiveness of OBi-Wan. </p><p>I'm considering a second chapter, where Obi-Wan is awake, but I'd love your thoughts. Might be that its' best on its own. </p><p>As always, I hope you enjoy! Please R and R, let me know what you think :) </p><p>Find me on tumblr at this same name</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ahsoka looked at though she wanted to offer to help him, as though the burden of carrying his master might have been too much for Anakin to bear on his own. He ignored her.  Obi-Wan was feather-light in his arms, as though one strong breeze rushing through the landing platform might have carried him away in the wind. Anakin couldn’t be sure if that weight was accurate, or if the overwhelming relief he had held that Obi-Wan had not been dead had simply buoyed him enough that even his body did not care.</p><p>Thirteen days, it had been. He had done unspeakable things in the past thirteen days, the least terrible of which was murder the Zygerrian Queen in her bed as she slept beside him. But this, this last measure let him cling to the idea that there might still be hope left.</p><p>“Get supplies from the medbay,” Anakin said to Ahsoka, his own voice perfectly flat, “And bring them to my quarters, please.”</p><p>“Shouldn’t Master Obi-Wan go to the Medbay?”</p><p>“There isn’t a healer,” Anakin said, and now the strangled note of desperation came into his voice, “Only supplies.” He looked down at his master’s face, ashen and drawn. “Please go and get supplies.”</p><p>She didn’t argue again, and Rex, from whom he had taken Obi-Wan from to begin with, turned to follow her. Anakin shifted his arms to start the walk to his quarters, walking as fast as he dared. Obi-Wan’s head bounced slightly against his chest as he moved, a barely noticeable tapping over Anakin’s heart. He held him even closer, trying to stop any unnecessary movement; cradling Obi-Wan tight to him as though he were a sleeping child.</p><p>The thought brought back a memory Anakin had quite forgotten, of a child he had carried years ago after they had escaped from the Creche only to fall asleep in front of the artwork in the entrance of the temple. And another one he would have liked to forget: His mother and the weight of her broken body held aloft in his arms as her head had pressed against his shoulder.</p><p>The walk to his quarters at the end of the hallway was endless. Thirteen days long.</p><p>He levitated the sheets from where they were stacked on the end of the sleep couch, waiting on him to rest after this mission. As he deliberated where he might lay Obi-Wan for a few moments to spread them out over the table, Ahsoka arrived with the medpac and wordlessly did it for him. She took the pillow from the couch as well, sliding it into a clean white case and fixing it at the top of table, stepping back to grant Anakin a wide berth.</p><p>Gently, as gently as he had ever done anything, Anakin lowered Obi-Wan to the table. His legs first, shoes gone and leggings stained with grime and blood, the bottom hems torn away. Then his back, where he expected some kind of reaction, some sign that Obi-Wan could feel the pain that he knew must be running through him, but there was nothing but the slightest shift of his head, turning further into Anakin’s tunic. And finally his head, cradling the back of his neck with his mechanical hand until he was laid out fully on the table over the sheet that he could see was starting to smear scarlet.</p><p>Ahsoka gasped, and Anakin jerked his gaze upwards, wondering what new injury she had discovered only to see that she was instead looking at him. At Anakin’s shirt, more specifically, which was dripping heavily with blood.</p><p>“Why don’t you go help your people?” Anakin said, “There’s a lot of them. They’ll need help.”</p><p>“There aren’t that many left,” Ahsoka argued, and he could tell she hadn't meant to say it. She was not wrong. Rex had said, when they had rescued the Togrutas who remained, that the small crowd of them—less than a dozen—were all that were still alive. What had happened to the rest he had not specified, and Anakin would leave it to the Council to ask questions he didn’t really want answers to. “Yes, Master.”</p><p>She said, and nodded, though he could tell it was more than reluctant. The Togrutas were her people, but Obi-Wan was as well. The same way he was Anakin’s. He loved her for that hesitation, but knew that her staying here was not an option. He could feel himself teetering on the edge of...<em>something</em>. She could not be here if he tipped over it.</p><p>Anakin took off the bloodstained outer tunic he had been wearing, pulling on one of the endless plain black tunics from the closet, clearly designed for a clone trooper. But at least it was clean.</p><p>He washed his hand and pulled gloves over it and his prosthetic. He filled a chrome bowl with warm water from the refresher, collecting a stack of cloths from wherever he could find them in these quarters that were his in name only. Not touching any of the first aid supplies yet, he pulled out a pair of scissors from the case.</p><p>They were heavy-duty, designed for the removal of restraints for people who were trapped inside them. They sliced through the threadbare remnants of Obi-Wan’s tunic and leggings as though they were paper, leaving him in his undershorts lying on top of what remained of his clothes below him. Anakin couldn’t help the thought that all of that fabric, beige and stained with streaks of red and laid out around his limbs looked like carefully flayed skin.</p><p>Thirteen days, it had taken them to do this. Obi-Wan had always been thin; he was muscular but more lean than Anakin. Now though, it was clear that for thirteen days he had been starving. His diaphragm, moving with his uneven breathing, never expanded to the point that his ribs weren’t outlined hard against his skin. The cut of the bones of his hips were almost a jut into his stomach, his collarbones hollow above and below. All of that underneath un-patterned swirls of bruises and burns and filth. Anakin took one of the rags in his hand and began the simple task of clearing Obi-Wan's skin of that first layer.</p><p>Powerless to stop them, images flickered through Anakin’s mind as he worked. A beating once, when he was seven years old, and a well-placed kick had broken one of his ribs. Another when his mother had been beaten on the open floor of Gardula the Hutt’s mansion for the amusement of the others in attendance. The bruises had looked like red and purple dessert flowers, blooming over her stomach.  </p><p>Obi-Wan has at least three broken ribs now, possibly four, almost dented in specific spots. As Anakin wiped away what he thought was some sort of black spot of dirt, Obi-Wan jerked away from his touch for the first time and Anakin realized that, although it was nearly black, it wasn’t dirt but instead a bruise, swollen with blood underneath. He swallowed back guilt first. Guilt that this happened. Guilt that he couldn’t stop it from happening. Guilt for being anything less than gentle against Obi-Wan’s injuries. Then shame, that burned and thickened with the bowl of water until both were as thick as gelatin.</p><p>He watched it swirl down the drain, into the storage compartment of the ship. He thought about it as he went through the motions of cleaning and refilling the bowl, rinsing out the rags and hanging them to dry. Thought about how they would have to purify it, separate all of the thirteen days of blood and grime and gore from the rest and cycle it back through the ship. Maybe to this exact sink. Maybe to the soup they would feed them at dinner tomorrow. To the showers. To the sprinklers. A bit of blood streaked the metal of the sink and he stared at it. Watched the red line get thinner and thinner and thinner until the last of it vanished into the drain. He went back to the table.</p><p>Obi-Wan’s face was tightening against his already pale features. All along his arms, gooseflesh rippled in tiny waves, the hairs standing straight up.</p><p>He was cold.</p><p>This realization, perhaps more than any other, dropped through Anakin’s stomach like a stone. Medical care, real medical care, was nearly two standard days away. He was doing everything he could--which at the moment had been little more than clean Obi-Wan with a filthy pile of rags-- and he couldn’t even keep him from being cold. How cold had been for the last thirteen days? How often had he wondered when Anakin was coming? If Anakin was coming? How many times had he wrapped his arms around himself, around his broken ribs and burns and bruises to keep warm because he had given his thin excuse for a blanket to one of the Togrutas?</p><p>He was tempted to increase the temperature on the thermostat, but without seeing the rest of Obi-Wan’s injuries, he didn’t dare do it. He did his best instead to work faster, going through two bowls of water as quickly as he had the first. He was careful though, so careful, especially on the skin that had been burned. There was a mix of burns with the other injuries, the worst of it on his neck where the skin was peeling away, raw, and blackened underneath and most of the rest of the burns on his torso were much smaller. Perfect circles from the end of an electro-jabber.</p><p>He pushed everything out of his mind but this, focusing on Obi-Wan’s minute shivering to keep him focused. The faster this was finished, the sooner he could wrap Obi-Wan in some of the thick, woven blankets he had seen in the closet so he could get some proper rest. He wrung the rag out and started on Obi-Wan’s feet.</p><p>The sudden jerking took him completely by surprise, the bowl of water almost being launched off the table. Obi-Wan’s breathing pitched and he turned slightly onto his side, drawing his foot away from Anakin’s grip. Anakin steadied his own breath, letting it shake as he breathed out, steadying the bowl of water. He reached out again, carefully, and gripped Obi-Wan’s foot by the ankle. It was impossible to tell, from the mess of things caked to the sole what might be the issue.</p><p>He wiped carefully at the skin, taking half-sobbing breaths as Obi-Wan thrashed weakly but desperately to move his foot away from Anakin’s grip with each touch. Finally, after minutes of what seemed fruitless work, the skin of Obi-Wan’s foot emerged from the thick crust he had wiped away.</p><p>
  <em>They punished them for what we did. And him for what they did. </em>
</p><p>Rex’s words crawled into Anakin’s mind, and he stilled, only his eyes moving to Obi-Wan’s face where his eyes were clenched tightly against the pain if only because he couldn’t bear to look at his feet. The marks there were familiar, ones that Anakin had seen more than once in his childhood. Runaway slaves were worth nothing in the eyes of their masters except for as a deterrent to keep the rest from getting any ideas. It had been common practice, and he had watched as his mother had wrapped the feet of many of their fellow slaves, to damage the feet. Make it impossible for them to run away again.</p><p>Crisscrossed along Obi-Wan’s feet were thin stripes, only one any wider than the width of a fingernail. Whip marks, with band of black burns along them. An electro whip then, as punishment for one of the Togrutas who had tried to escape. He knew without looking that the other foot had to be the same.</p><p>Silently, he let go of his foot that Obi-Wan pulled away, the man tucking it back as much as he could. As far away from Anakin’s grip as he could move it. Anakin went to the medical kit, feeling strangely calm, and began unpacking the rest of the supplies, searching for soaking salts. The more packets he pulled free, the more he felt the horrible choking feeling swelling in his chest. There were none. None at all of the one thing that he needed.</p><p>As quick as the panic swelled in his chest, it turned to anger. Hardly conscious of what he was doing, he slammed his metal hand into the table hard enough to create a dent in the medal. He held in a scream, but only just barely, resisting the urge to smash the bottles of medicine to pieces and upend everything in the apartment until he had what he needed.</p><p>Instead, he comm’d Ahsoka. He said what he needed from the medical supplies in a thin voice, and she assured him that she would be there as quickly as she could. He leaned forward on his arms, closing his eyes for the briefest moment. Steeling his nerves, he moved back to Obi-Wan’s bed and took ahold of his second ankle. It was only one touch before Obi-Wan was pulling away again—unconsciously, Anakin knew-- but it didn’t make the knowledge that he was causing him more pain any easier to deal with.</p><p>“I have to clean them, Obi-Wan,” He said softly without truly meaning to speak. The sound broke through the silence and then he couldn’t’ stop the words. “If I don’t they’ll get infected. You remember that time you got bitten by that lizard frog when I was a padawan? I don’t even remember where that was. Your shoulder turned green; I thought the healers were going to kill you for not reporting in sooner.”</p><p>It might have been his imagination, but Obi-Wan’s pulling away became less insistent as he talked. The lines around his face relaxed, if only minutely. “How long did they make you walk on these?” He asked, and now it was barely more than a whisper. There was a mark splitting across the ball of Obi-Wan’s foot that was not only cut, but split as if the skin underneath had swollen and burst. Even through the rag he was using, he could feel the heat coming through the area from the infection that lurked underneath. “I have to clean them,” He repeated, the mantra doing nothing to soothe either of them. “I have to.”</p><p>He pressed his thumb against the spot, checking to see if there were anything lodged in the ridge, and for the first time, a low noise came from Obi-Wan’s throat. A noise of weak protest, buried underneath everything keeping him unconscious.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Anakin said, even as he kept feeling in the cut. If he left anything in there, it could mean that Obi-Wan lost his foot. “I have to clean them. I have to, Master. I’m sorry,” The whisper turned into a chant, and, as he finished searching the cut, he felt the tears start rolling down the edges of his face. There was so much to be sorry for, so much pain that he had caused, that he hadn’t stopped.</p><p>It was pouring out of him, in tears and in words and in the bowl of water colored crimson and black as he worked almost frantically, keeping his hand from shaking by sheer will alone. The door to his quarters opened and he waited on Ahsoka to interrupt him, but she didn’t. He tried to stop his words, but as he pressed too harshly on a cut that started to spill fresh blood over Obi-Wan’s heel, he couldn’t help but continue. “I have to clean them.”</p><p>Ahsoka disappeared into the kitchen area and Anakin could hear her shaking out a measure of the salts into another bowl, running water to warm it.</p><p>Finally, thankfully, mercifully, he finished cleaning Obi-Wan’s feet. “We’re almost done, Master,” He said, debating which of Obi-Wan’s sides it would be best for him to lie on temporarily. He decided that it didn’t truly matter, and turned him as gently as he could manage, keeping him balanced with one careful hand and exposing his back. “I have to clean these, too.”</p><p>It was clear that this had been the most popular target, and immediately the heavy, sour scent of infection hit Anakin’s nose. It was easy to spot, some of the older marks were swollen with inflammation, crusted in places with pus or poorly forming scar tissue. Ahsoka emerged from the kitchen, the bowl of salt water stuffed with towels that soaked up the mixture. As Anakin cleaned Obi-Wan’s back, blood sticking his fingers together and dripping down onto the table, Ahsoka wrapped his feet with soaked bits of rags.</p><p>It should have been easier to clean these, but as Ahsoka wrapped the salt around the cuts on his feet, Anakin had to stop. Obi-Wan whimpered in pain, doing his best to move away from Ahsoka’s touch, pressing the infected areas of his back into Anakin’s hands. Anakin could see, on the edge of his eyes, that Obi-Wan was crying, totally and completely oblivious to the two of them. He fought against his own tears, closing his eyes.</p><p>He expected Ahsoka to be crying as he looked down at her, but instead she looked stricken, her hands stilled on the towels that were dotting red. “We have to clean them,” Anakin said, to her this time instead of Obi-Wan, and she nodded. She tightened the fabric as Obi-Wan thrashed his legs weakly. Anakin started his process over again, scrubbing away weeks of torture from Obi-Wan’s back, leaving behind raw flesh that burned even through the rags.</p><p>“I have to clean them,” He spoke to Obi-Wan again, his master taking deep, shuddering breaths as the salt in the rags started to filter into the still-open wounds of his feet as Ahsoka kept them still. “It’ll only take a minute, but I have to get this cleared out.”</p><p>There was one mark that lacked the characteristic burns of the electro-whip marks that had done most of the damage. These marks were deep, even, crusted over with infection. He lifted his hand, realizing that he could line his fingers up with them. Claw marks then, from an unwashed hand gripping him by the shoulder, that had cut not only through Obi-Wan’s ragged tunic but layers or skin and fat and muscle. What had he done to deserve this? What had any of them done to earn this?</p><p>Anger twisted hot in his guts, and for a moment, it was strong enough to beat back the despair that he hadn’t realized had wrapped itself around his lungs. The breath was choked from him, knowing what came next. He hunted in the kit and found tweezers and a small vibroblade.</p><p>Whispering words that even he couldn’t’ keep straight anymore, he cut away the infected bits. Obi-Wan turned away from him, turning onto his stomach so much that Anakin had to catch him with one arm and keep him upright. And he had to keep cutting. Keep slicing away the infected tissue and cauterize the wounds there.</p><p>Ahsoka looked away.</p><p>“Master, I…”</p><p>“Go help your people.”</p><p>This time it was a dismissal that she took gratefully. And he kept at his work, the horrible smell of burning flesh in his nostrils and Obi-Wan’s gasps of agony the only sound besides his own voice that had long ceased to soothe anyone.</p><p>What felt like days later, he stopped. As a final act, he remade and switched the towels wrapped around Obi-Wan’s feet, the ones put there by Ahsoka stained with stripes and splatters of blood again but the swelling on his feet already going down.</p><p>He left Obi-Wan lying on his side to keep him from disrupting the sensitive space on his back, propping him up with one of the pillows. What had been a painfully unconscious state was changing into a sort of sleep. He could feel the shift through the force. A good sign, except it meant he would be awake soon.</p><p>Anakin stood by the table for a long time, hand still feeling the odd residue of the glove he had covered it with. He wanted to do something. Needed to do something else. He looked at Obi-Wan’s body, now looking oddly clean. All except for one space.</p><p>He knew what to do then, and refilled his water basin, setting it on of the stools that up just below the height of the table. He moved Obi-Wan using the sheet underneath him until his head was over the table’s edge. He used the pillow to keep the damaged spots of his back off the sheet and rolled him carefullyf onto his back.</p><p>It took three bowls of simply soaking and squeezing Obi-Wan’s hair until the water didn’t turn a disturbingly thick shade of red. On the fourth though, Anakin was able to work his fingers into it and start to see some of the actual ginger color underneath. For the fifth and sixth he was able to squeeze it almost free of blood entirely and on the seventh, he could start to work in the shampoo from the refresher sink.</p><p>He worked as gently as he could over Obi-Wan’s scalp, tugging free bits of blood and dirt and other things he didn’t want to think about that were stuck there. He worked out small knots and tangles with his hands, grateful when he thought about the last time he had seen Obi-Wan so injured and his hair had been far longer. For the first time since he had discovered the state of Obi-Wan’s feet, the man did not flinch away from his touch. The motion was soothing to him, Anakin could tell through the force. Soothing to them both.</p><p>“You always did like your hair to be neat,” Anakin said with almost a laugh. It was absurd to laugh, he thought, but his emotional controls were beyond exhausted. “Maybe I should have done this first.”</p><p>As he finished, he rinsed the red-tinted foam from Obi-Wan’s hair and rinsed it through with a couple of additional basins until the water ran clear and he could clearly identify the cut that appeared to be the only significant head wound to smear it with bacta. Most of the blood, then, must have come from his other injuries. (Or someone else’s.)  He dried Obi-Wan’s hair with one of the larger towels that remained clean before shifting him back down the table to be able to place the pillow under him again.</p><p>It all felt very methodical, hardly as though it were going to do anything. But, and part of it may have been hopeful imagination, he thought Obi-Wan’s breathing eased. He shifted on the table, wrinkling the remains of his tunic underneath himself, the blood that had been soaked into it now almost completely dried. Anakin worried for a moment that something was pressing into a wound checked him over but then remembered the slight shiver from earlier. The skin on Obi-Wan’s arms was raised again as the water dried all along him.</p><p>Anakin swallowed, beating back the swell of helplessness in his chest left over from earlier. This time, he was not so helpless.</p><p>He went to the closet where a stack of military issue blankets were carefully stacked. He sifted through them to find the softest, taking it and second, heavier one back over Obi-Wan. Careful to dodge the water, he laid the soft one over his skin from shoulder to ankle, then covered him over again with the second to trap the heat, careful to keep both from touching his back. He watched Obi-Wan’s face as it started to loosen the slightest amount, his brow unfurling in the center of his forehead as he started to sleep a bit easier.</p><p>Anakin could remember all the times that he had been sick as a padawan the feeling of soothing waves of heat or cold or silence or soft noise washing over him. Whatever he had needed, consistently, constantly. He had thought for a long time that it had simply been his newfound connection to the force but had realized, after trying to instruct Ahsoka similarly, that it had actually been Obi-Wan all of those times. It was a mild healing trance, one that if Anakin had taken the time to learn it, he would know. In this moment, he couldn’t’ remember any good reason why he hadn’t learned it.</p><p>But wishing for it couldn’t make it happen, so instead he did what he could to send soothing thoughts and feelings through the bond he shared with Obi-Wan whenever he felt a spike in pain or fear or something else playing inside of his mind. He changed shirts, draping the now ruined one over one of the metal stools before pulling on another, identical one. He sat on the end of the sleep couch, legs crossed over one another, and waited.</p><p>Waited on the next spike. Waited on Ahsoka to open the door again. Waited on Obi-Wan to open his eyes. Waited for something. For anything that wasn’t this.</p>
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